Rogers Redding has an itch he can’t scratch.
Speaking generally, Redding expressed concern about ethical issues involved with faking injuries. Officials are instructed to treat injuries as if they are real and to stop play.
“There’s nothing the officiating community can do about it, and there may be nothing the rules committee can do about it,” Redding said.
Boy, that’s gotta suck.
Get The Picture 
What bullshit. All they have to do is mandate that a player cannot return to the game for a certain period if they go to the ground for an injury. Ten snaps off the field would go a long way toward making teams think twice about players flopping.
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Ed Zachery, 7 to 10 plays should do the trick, let the replay official keep up with it.
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“ethical issues…faking injuries….instructed to treat injuries as if they are real…stop play.”
What is deM.U.I.R. (Malzahn Utmost Integrity Rule)?
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Except for the last 2 minutes of the half and the last 5-7 minutes of the game, require offenses to wait 15 seconds before snapping the ball when considering the full 40-second clock or 5 seconds for the 25-second clock and require injured players to come off the field for 5 snaps will stop the flopping on defense. The flop is the only answer for a defense that needs to catch its breath or run in a group of subs. The rules have gotten so in favor of the offense that it has changed the way the game is played. It’s more like sandlot football than real strategy now for teams like Oregon, Baylor, Texas Tech, A&M, etc.
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I’m sure they’d agree that going fast IS their strategy. If you don’t like it, then stop them.
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Well, the answer to that is flopping. If you don’t like it, then stop them.
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Heck if a player is injured so badly he has to go down on the field and the clock is stopped made him disqualified for the remainder of the game. The damn wasses that are screwing the sport would go for that.
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Kind of like intentional fouls near the end of a round ball game. You let the worst shooter you have foul out….that’s what will happen..a second or third string player will go out to fake the injury.
Maybe they should give each team one extra…to be used on defense only…30 second time out per half. If a player can’t get off of the field, you spend that time out. If it happens twice…you use the time out that was intended for the second half…past that..it’s a five yard penalty.BUt this is a knife that can cut both ways…the offense needing time for a late drive can fake injuries too.
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I can’t imagine a rule ever passing that requires you to sit out a specific number of plays (more than 1) if you go down for an injury. Who would keep up with that,from an officiating standpoint? For that matter, who would keep up with it on the coaching staff? It would be like trying to keep up with what down it is, without the down markers. Trying to manage that from all sides would make the targeting rule look like a stroke of genius.
I like the idea as a deterrent, just don’t see any way for it to be practically applied.
However, I may be in the minority, but the faking of injuries just doesn’t bother me much. If it could easily be legislated out of the game, then fine, go ahead and get rid of it. But if there’s not an easy way to do it, just deal with it. When you’re on offense, you still get to line up and run the same play you wanted to run on the next play regardless. If you execute how you should, then the fake injury didn’t matter. If you don’t execute, blame yourself, not the fake injury. This falls along the same lines I have about officials losing a game for you…….I’m a big fan of playing well enough that it doesn’t matter what the officials do.
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So how many extra timeouts are ok in your book? Because that’s all this is.
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I’m not saying I’m a fan of the fake injuries. Just that they don’t bother me. And if there is not a reasonable way to legislate them out of the game, then why get worked up about them? To your point though – if we start seeing something like 10 blatantly fake injuries a game, I’ll change my tune. I hope no coaches would take it that far. But as it currently stands, a bit of gamesmanship here and there, it just doesn’t bother me.
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Look, everybody seems to like the O going fast because it makes for high scoring but really it is just a cheap trick to try to gas the D and get cheap TDs. The answer is to allow 15 seconds or so between plays for the D to substitute. I’ll bet that if such a rule got passed the Oregons of the world would quit the hurry-up. I for one, bemoan the hurry-up. If I wanted to watch rugby I would go to a rugby match.
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I concur. If the defense is essentially forced to fake injuries because it has no other recourse, then the rules should be changed. The spirit of the game is to be able to substitute freely. Faking injuries is really not an acceptable part of the game, though, either way.
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I can definitely buy what you are selling.
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It IS awfully hard to keep with things in football. We would definitely need an 8th official, maybe an extra scoreboard in the end zone to keep track of it, you know, definitely additional rules variations. I can see how that would be impossible to stomach, because, in football, we never make additional rules tweaks or hold officials responsible for making impossible judgments. No…no way it would work in a simple, under-regulated sport like football.
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Ok but here’s my point……..how realistic do you really think it is that they would go to the lengths described (additional official, additional scoreboards, etc) for what is essentially just a bit of gamesmanship? I’m not saying I disagree with the idea of getting rid of it, I’m just saying there aren’t many practical ideas that would actually have a chance of getting passed into the rulebook.
I can definitely buy into what the Mayor said above though. I haven’t thought through all the potential unintended effects of a mandatory substitution period on each play, but on the surface it seems the most practical idea I’ve seen.
However, one problem I can see is when the offense is driving towards the end of a game……….if they get tackled inbounds with 13 seconds to go and no timeouts, and there is a 15 second substitution period for the defense, then the game is over without the offense getting another snap off. I’m sure there would be other unintended consequences that would have to be dealt with, but it seems like a good starting point.
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“How realistic do you really think it is that they would go to the lengths described (additional official, additional scoreboards, etc)..” Click the sarcasm button on the toolbar, my friend. 🙂
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Maybe stoppage time? When you have limited opportunities for substitutions and time-outs, you get flopping. Soccer proves that.
The problem with penalizing injuries is that you’re penalizing all injuries in order to eliminate fake injuries. You’re encouraging a player to play hurt until his team has an opportunity to legally substitute. It creates a whole bunch of nonsense worse than the nonsense it is meant to prevent – sort of like our new targeting rules.
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I don’t see that stoppage time would help. For example, in this case with Auburn and Arkansas, it was in the 3rd quarter. Who’s to say that adding extra time on the clock wouldn’t actually benefit the offending team at the end of the game? They might get the ball back towards the end of the game, needing a score, and have an extra 30 seconds or whatever the stoppage time would be to go down the field and score, time that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. So they wouldn’t be punished at all, they’d actually be helped.
Like I said a couple of times above, I just don’t think there is a way to legislate fake injuries out of the game. If it starts to get out of hand, hopefully the coaches who are taking it too far will be shamed by everyone, colleagues included, enough to get them back in line. Otherwise I don’t know what will have to be done if most coaches take it too far.
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Sometimes defensive players are gassed but not injured so they have to flop. I hope this issue doesn’t turn into another overreach.
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One thing about Georgia this year, you don’t have worry about anybody FAKING an injury.
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Hey! If there was a rule against flopping the damn SEC refs would call a penalty on Georgia using that rule when a UGA player REALLY WAS injured! I am not joking!!!!
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Rogers Redding is apparently NOT a soccer fan.
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I am in the camp of making a player sit until a change of possession occurs whenever they require a time stoppage for injury, or pretend injury. This isn’t to support all the speed-up offenses but the officials shouldn’t be put in the position of being a doctor on this and stopping play and having medical staff come out indicates a player should be checked out. I realize it could just be a cramp but the integrity of the game should be protected and safety of the player maintained, it isn’t something to fool around with. I realize Redding isn’t the smartest of people but this is a simple issue with an easy solution.
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Let the flopping or injured player sit out till change of possession, yes, I think you are on to something here, I really believe it would work!
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